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 Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 8:11 am
It had been blinding rage, and it hadn't been at just Paris. Ladon had been holding so much hate in the world for everything. His outlook on life had taken a sharp turn - to where Billy had felt better about humanity and Paris had more faith in someone - Ladon lost that and had only come to trust those he "worked" for, and even then he found himself arguing and bickering among his group. He had no friends. He had no outlet for a slew of feelings and memories that plagued him each night, and the only two people who experienced the same thing didn't want to talk to him about it and help him heal. They wanted to ignore it, and try as Ladon might, he couldn't. It wouldn't let him, and that time of being tormented, with his one support, Billy, leaving him, and many other things had piled on top of him to make unstable. The fact he was honestly considering taking the plate the bacon rested on nd using a shard of porcelain as a weapon spoke that much to him, and he was again reminded of the warnings from others. That his emotions were controlling them and that he was becoming something else.
But Paris wouldn't stop, and once their words started to roll out, seeking some sort of justification and some realization from the other, a angry plea in both directions, it didn't stop.
"Of course I wanted to call, but what the heck do I tell someone who never showed up? First I thought you were busy, and then. And then I didn't even know what you were thinking. It had already been so long, and I didn't even see you show up to express any concern. You used to pop by every few days and then nothing. You did the same thing to me as other people I knew, and I was just waiting to see if it was true. When you didn't call or show up or even give me a text - I thought the message was pretty clear. So yeah - I hated you. I wanted to find your house and throw rocks through the windows. I thought of calling up after a point to shout at you. I would have, but I wasn't even able to. I - " He could tell Paris the truth, but he wanted his excuse, he wanted to give him the reason that he was actual unable to call him, to meet him, that he hadn't even been capable of such a thing. " - I was in the hospital for 2 weeks. The only person who showed any concern was Billy, and that b*****d did just as you said he did. What's worse is, he said ALL the things you are saying now about Chris. That he wanted to mess with me for fun but then fell in love with me. You are toying with someone cause you think it's fun, and then you change your mind and actually like him? Well guess what, you are going to destroy that kid!" He threw his hand at the direction of the door that Chris just exited from. "The longer you drag this on to make yourself feel better, the worse you are going to make it on him, and then your little, ********!" He gestured at Paris, not even knowing what this was - what his relationship had been with Billy had or was. "...is just going to shatter."
He took a moment to breath, TRY to clear his head, but he wanted to address every concern, to throw the ball back in Paris' court. If they were going to throw all the cards on the table, then here was the time.
"I'm not going to say that I ignore all the people you slept with or how easy you did it. You can't expect me to ignore who you were or how you acted. That makes up A PART of who you are and I accepted that, but I know you're a good person and you are above this type of s**t you are pulling here. If you want to be a good person and deserving of how he treats you, then be a decent human being and don't pull him along with fake ideas. He loves an idea of you, and the longer you stay with him, he's going to think he knows everything about you and feel safe that way." He was shaking now. He had thought he and Billy had it all. He loved him so much and he thought they were perfect. That they got each other - and yet Billy had been lying to him since day one and he still hurt.
"So I'm really happy you are enjoying yourself, but I can't say you are a good person for it, and I feel damn bad for Chris for what you are doing. You can call me a selfish p***k all you want, but no one else pulled you off the street when you needed a place to stay. If I thought you were a whore not worth a damn, I wouldn't have bothered. At least think of that much."
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Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2011 10:11 am
At some point, the anger turned into something like grief, the guilt led the way to shame, and Paris felt miserable and exposed with no one to save him, nothing to defend himself with, and nowhere to hide. His hands hung useless and shaking until the started to fiddle with the hem of his dress, and his eyes looked everywhere, at everything except Ladon, who had always been and remained one of the only people capable of making him feel true shame. It hurt. It made his stomach feel too full and his heart feel too hollow, as if someone had carved out everything worth keeping there and tossed it below for a slow, painful death in roiling acid.
He wanted to sit down but the couches were too far and he didn't think he could make it to a chair. He wanted to hide his face and not look at anyone until he was somehow able to compose himself -- and what a miracle that would be, when he felt himself and everything he'd managed to build over the last few months crumbling apart. He wanted to run away and go somewhere else where none of this pain could find him, but no matter what he'd done or where he'd gone before, somehow it had always caught up with him, and he didn't think it would be any different this time.
"You never told me you were in the hospital," Paris said weakly, chancing a look at Ladon, trying not to let his wet eyes get the better of him. "What happened? I... I would have come over right away if I knew. You could have called me and I would have come. I would have taken care of you until you were better. I would have done anything. ******** Billy. I don't care about Billy. He's a douche. He never deserved you. If I was right about him, then..."
He never got around to finishing, put off of his trail by Ladon's comparisons which hit him like a punch to the gut.
He wasn't like Billy. He wasn't. He didn't use people with the intention of hurting them. When it came down to it, he didn't really want to hurt anybody. He used people because they used him, because it was easier and less messy than anything more worthwhile, because for a long time that's all he thought he was worth, to use and be used and not give a damn when it was over because it hadn't meant anything in the first place. Then he learned to care about someone, to put effort into a friendship that meant something, and he watched one of the people he'd used and let use him try to use someone else, someone he cared about, and he realized how badly that game could hurt, so he played it less and less, with the one exception, the one mistake, being Chris.
"I don't know what to do anymore," he said, unable to just stand there anymore and take the abuse and hurl it back. He lowered himself into a crouch on the floor, arms around his legs and head into his knees. "I know I messed up. I know I have to tell him the truth, but... I don't know how and I'm in over my head and I can't ruin the one good thing I have right now. I know I'm stupid. I know I'm selfish. I know I'm a shitty person. I don't need you to tell me that. He... Chris is one of the only people who's ever made me feel good about myself, and now I feel terrible about what I've done and I don't know how to fix it. I ******** up everything."
He struggled to find something that he hadn't yet managed to ruin, and he realized that there wasn't anything.
"I ******** up with you because I'm a coward and incapable of dealing with my life so I ran away from it and tried to be something I'm not. I'm ******** up with Chris because I need him too badly and I want this and I'm too selfish to let it go. I'm ******** up again now by letting myself get angry because it's easier to deal with than everything else. I was so happy to see you," he said, chancing another look up even as he remained on the floor. "I never stopped caring, Ladon. I never stopped thinking about you. But there was so much going on and I just... I got so lost in it... and every time I thought about going to see you I remembered how you hadn't called, and I thought maybe you were better off without me, maybe you didn't need me after all, maybe I was just making things more difficult for you. I... I don't know what else to do... Please, please, don't hate me..."
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Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:00 pm
Ladon watched his friend crumple to the floor, curling up in a similar way he saw Tate do once, and it pulled on his heartstrings. A tune he thought he forgot or was missing a few strings now. Frowning, he calmed down and he had to take a moment. He set his cup aside, pressed his hands on the counter, and just breathed. Simple, simple breathing. He just...had a hard time thinking, and this wasn't making him feel great. He didn't want to start raging again, and with Paris this way, it would serve no point.
The room was quiet now, and Ladon moved around the island and looked down at the teenager before him. Since he didn't seem to be standing up, Ladon crouched down, and when he thought about shaking the boy's shoulder, he stopped himself. He instead stood back up and went to sit on one of the chairs by the island. He needed to rest a second too if they were going to have heavy conversations. "I didn't want you see me.. Trust me. You didn't want to see me either, and ...it just wasn't time for you to come over....so I guess that not showing up was a good thing. I didn't call after all or send you a text after. I guess we're both to blame. We have stuff going on in our lives, but even if we barely saw each other or life gets in the way, maybe we should...at least send a text a week? Just to show we're still alive?" It sounded like a simple rule and something either one of them could do. Even if they didn't see each other, they could still show they were there.
"You want something perfect and you want to live a lie. Didn't you hate me for wanting that, Paris? Didn't you think that was stupid? Chris is putting his emotions on the line for this and you know all the facts. That's not fair. You should tell him, and that's all I'm going to say about that. It's all on you. I said what I said. Even if it's hard to do, it should be done. You know that. No one is going to wind up happy this way if you don't tell him the truth. If anything, you might find someone you don't have to lie to to be happy." Despite being bright-eyed and glimmering with hope as he had once done before, Ladon was speaking softly, without too much faith in what he was saying. It was hard to talk about finding your special someone when you felt like dirt and were still getting over your first real relationship. He felt he liked to talk about romance even less now.
"I don't hate-hate you. I'm just upset about things. Get up off the floor. You'll wrinkle your dress."
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Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 4:04 pm
He looked up when Ladon actually came over to him as he crouched on the floor, expecting a hug and not getting one, as he watched in disappointment as Ladon got back up to go sit on one of the chairs. Paris pouted and produced a variety of childishly spoiled, disappointed looks before sitting fully onto the floor with a petulant grumble of, "I don't care about my dress," and then just flopping onto his back to lie there and stare up at the high, high ceiling.
He didn't know what to feel anymore. His head hurt, his chest hurt, his throat hurt, his stomach felt uncomfortably upset, like it was still tangled up in knots too impossibly tight to undo. He wondered if it'd stop and let him feel better if he just went into the bathroom and threw up, but that was gross and not the appropriate way to deal with it, so he didn't. Besides, he'd made himself sick enough before, those first couple of months that he'd stopped coming by.
So he lied there on the floor instead and hoped that somehow the emotions would just seep out of him, drift out of his pours like some invisible, toxic gas and disappear.
"I don't want to just text. I want to see you, too," he insisted. Texting was too easy, too distant -- though he'd do it. He had before. He didn't even know why he'd stopped doing that. Texting didn't require dragging Ladon through all that s**t piled in the path that was his life. Texting made it easier to stick to the basics and not worry about revealing secrets he thought were better left untold. "I miss you. I miss how things were before."
Not all of it. He didn't think he missed all the horrible feelings he'd had -- the anger, jealousy, disappointment and feelings of abandonment he'd been carrying around for years. Not those ugly things. He could do without all that. It felt good to be mostly rid of it, though they were quickly being replaced by other things -- shame being the main culprit. What he missed was the comfort and warmth, the freedom of being around someone who generally accepted him for what he was. He missed being close to someone who didn't really expect anything from him, which was one of the reasons everything was so easy and comfortable with Chris.
But he didn't want to talk about the stuff with Chris anymore. He didn't really want to think about what he knew he had to do. He didn't know how to do it yet. It was just... not the right time.
"I don't even know why I stopped coming. I... Somehow I just got lost and swept up in everything, and this city ******** sucks and I hate it but I can't leave because it's my home and I don't have anywhere else to go, and I don't want to be chased away. I just... felt like I was losing control of everything, and I ran like the ******** coward that I am," he said. He was trying to be careful, wary about saying something he didn't want to, but he was so used to not talking about it with people now that it was easy to avoid when he was normal like this, or as close to normal as he could possibly get.
"I would have come if you'd told me you were hurt. You know I would have," he said, tearing his eyes away from the ceiling to turn his head and try to get a look at his friend while remaining on the floor. "I don't care if it was gross or whatever. It wouldn't have mattered to me. My dad's a drunk. I've cleaned up his puke before. I wouldn't have minded cleaning up after you. I would have made sure you were comfortable. I would have... I don't know, kept you from getting hurt anymore. I'm not just some dumb slut who needs a place to crash every once in a while. I care about you, too. I thought you knew that."
He knew he could be selfish. He knew he could seem so absorbed with himself and his own problems that it didn't seem as if he paid any attention to anyone else. But he did. He'd always tried to be there when Ladon needed him before. He'd done what he'd been asked to do. He'd helped him where he could, took care of him when it was needed. But maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe he hadn't done a good enough job.
He didn't know. He hadn't known how to be a friend before Ladon.
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Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 9:30 pm
"I know. You've been there for be before. I just....don't think that back then was the right time. I don't think it would have been a good idea now that I think about it. I didn't need anyone seeing that. How I was." How he acted. How he would flip on a dime at the smallest breeze of emotion from one extreme to the next for no reason.He also had enough people feeling pity for him. It was hard for anyone to see him burned and a mess of emotions and not see that very image of him for the rest of their life. It would be a memory they always had, and he didn't want to be remembered that way. Despite the fact he didn't feel that Paris would believe him, he wanted to show him that he was stronger than that. While he had to use the excuse of being jumped or mugged to explain his injuries, marks, and absence, he didn't want to tell him he didn't go down fighting. At least fabricating his own misadventure was better than the reality of what really happened. However, he doubted he'd be a very good storyteller and instead felt he would just leave the details very sparce.
"I just needed to rest in the end. I would have been terrible company. It's over now." At least, that part of the physical healing was. It would never be over for him. Not until he had his revenge.
Picking up his coffee, he sipped it and tried to be normal for a few moments, thinking and wondering if it was worth the effort of getting up and putting more sugar in his cup. It wasn't, and he continued to drink the coffee only because something hot in his stomach made him feel less hollow and cold.
They were touching bad subjects here, and he was far too exhausted both emotionally and physically now to deal with much more. "Then we'll schedule visits. We shouldn't...go one week without seeing each other. Deal?" He said, looking over to the boy on the floor. "And call if we can't." He rubbed his temple. "Sorry. I feel this is getting like a contract now." And this was supposed to be a friendship. Were they just making it too complex or was this a good thing? Then again, did other people even have to deal with these issues.
"I don't want to talk about this stuff anymore." He honestly admitted and set the cup down. He looked at the pile of food and felt bad that it would be wasted.
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 2:35 pm
Paris wanted to ask what had happened. He wanted to know and yet he didn’t at the same time, in case it was something his presence and his aid and his care could have prevented. He felt bad enough for avoiding him as it was without any of that on his conscience. It was selfish not to find out, self-centered and heartless of him not to at least ask again out of some strange sense of emotional self-preservation, but it didn’t seem as if Ladon wanted to talk about it all that much anyway. He’d had plenty of chances to explain what had happened and he hadn’t. Paris figured he mustn’t like thinking about it and so his questions went unasked.
Which only made him feel more curious, more concerned, more ashamed, because if it had been so bad that Ladon couldn’t even bring himself to say anything about it aside from alluding to how bad he’d been after the fact, Paris didn’t know if he could even stomach hearing it and thinking about how much he’d failed as a friend by not being there.
He closed his mouth around his questions and squashed his curiosity and shoved it into the back of his mind to be reacted upon at a better time—if there ever was a better time.
“Okay,” he agreed, unable and unwilling to argue. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”
It was painful enough as it was, and though Paris knew it was better to deal with it now than put it off until later, he wasn’t sure how much he could handle without going to lock himself in the bathroom and hiding away in there to cry for a while.
He lifted his hands to rub at his face, wiping any traces of sadness away from his eyes and taking a few slow breaths to calm himself down before sitting back up again. He pushed his bangs out of his eyes and tucked them back behind his ear as he climbed to his feet, straightening his dress back out and awkwardly shifting from foot to foot for a few moments, before sucking it up and risking it to move to join Ladon by the island, though he kept his head lowered and his shoulders sagged a bit and he couldn’t force much of a smile.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, a little more controlled now, a little less emotional. “You should at least try to eat something. You don’t really look like you’ve been eating all that well. I… Chris can drive you home whenever you want, or… I could walk with you if you wanted… or we could call you a cab if you’d rather be by yourself. I don’t mind. Chris wouldn’t mind either, and… after last night… I just… want to make sure you get home okay. I mean, I know you can do it by yourself. I’m just… worried now…”
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Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2011 3:25 pm
He looked at the pile and reached out, only to select an apple and then rose up. "I don't eat much in the morning. Tell Chris that I'm sorry, but I had to go. That and thank him again." He would have told Paris to lie for him, but considering his distaste for the lies he was already telling the boy, adding one more might be a little much. Getting off the stool, he walked past Paris and thought about giving him a hug, but things were far too awkward at the moment to be that buddy-buddy. There needed to be some rebuilding on their fragile friendship again, but at least it was still there. Instead, Ladon simply patted Paris' shoulder. "I'm not trying to lecture you. I'm really not, but you should know this can't end well if you keep going on like this. I guess, if you want to talk more about it, you can come to my apartment later. Um, do call though. I might be asleep." He tended to have a terrible sleep schedule that mainly made him sleep during the day and stay awake at night. The lack of sunlight probably wasn't helping him look any healthier, but he did sleep with his bed near the window to get that dose of light when he was snoozing.
"I'll...see you later. Also, I think you should be worrying about your boyfriend more than me. He trust people far too much. He's worse than I am." He didn't smile, and his hand slipped away from Paris' shoulder as he headed to the door, taking his shoes and slipping them on. Without another word, Ladon left Chris' apartment.
When he arrived home, he'd send Paris a text that he arrived home safetly.
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